Electro-Voice Model 630
A chromium-plated workhorse that broadcasters bolted to desks and studios trusted for speech — flat where it counts, bright where it matters.
Overview
The Model 630 is one of those Electro-Voice dynamics that turns up in the oddest places — mounted on a salt-air-plagued transmitter room wall, clamped to a podium, or screwed to a broadcast desk by a program director who wanted call letters cast in aluminum to hang beneath it. The company's own literature described it as a sturdy microphone built with typical E-V care to serve satisfactorily over a long period, and finished in lustrous chromium. That plating wasn't cosmetic vanity so much as a working finish for a mic expected to live in humid rooms and survive handling.
The heart of the thing is a tilting head — 90 degrees of tilt, letting the same microphone run directional or non-directional depending on how it's aimed. That's a genuinely useful bit of flexibility for a general-purpose dynamic, and it's the kind of detail that separates a broadcast tool from a stage prop. The head is what the user actually interacts with, and E-V made it adjustable rather than fixed.
Where the 630 earns its keep is in the voicing. E-V's documentation notes the microphone is unusually flat through the lower and middle register, then rises 5 dB on the upper frequencies for added crispness of speech. That's an intentional curve, not an accident of design — it's a speech microphone that flatters consonants and presence without muddying the low end.
The frequency response is quoted at 40 to 8,000 c.p.s. with slightly rising characteristics — a range that's honest about what this mic is for. Nobody buys a Model 630 expecting to capture a symphony; it's built for the spoken word, and the response curve says so. The output figures are equally workmanlike: the power rating sits 54 dB below 6 milliwatts for 10 bar pressure, and the high-impedance voltage rating is 7 46 above .001 volt/bar, open circuit. Normal speech at 10 bars develops .0224 volt. These are the numbers of a microphone designed to feed real-world PA and recording inputs without fuss.
Weight comes in at 1½ pounds, which is substantial enough to feel planted on a stand but not so heavy that the tilt mechanism becomes a chore. That mass, combined with the metal finish, gives the 630 the sort of heft that broadcasters associated with equipment that would still be in service a decade after purchase.
The Model 630 appears in period advertising alongside its sibling the Model 636, with E-V pitching the pair as eliminating critical placement problems and delivering uniform response. Audio (November 1960, p.61) ran the company's copy describing the omnidirectional character from all points and the slim, trim case styling — language aimed squarely at PA and general-purpose buyers who needed a microphone that would blend into a staging rather than dominate it. By early 1963 the 630 was still in the catalog, listed by Audio (February 1963, p.38) as a dynamic for general purpose recording and PA, with a list price of $52.50 and a choice of high-impedance or balanced low-impedance output. That price put it in serious working-microphone territory — not a bargain-bin item, but a tool a station or school could justify.
The broadcast world took the 630 seriously enough that it shows up in the trade press as an installed fixture. A letter to the editor in BM/E, from a program director at WSPR in Springfield, Massachusetts, asked readers for help finding a company that made cast aluminum call-letter plates for Electro-Voice Model 630 microphones — the kind of detail that tells you these mics were mounted on-air and dressed up with station identity. That's about as clear a signal as exists that the 630 was a broadcast-room resident, not a shelf queen.
Collectors today encounter the 630 mostly as a period piece with practical appeal. The chromium finish and baton-like proportions photograph well, and the tilt head makes it more interesting to handle than a fixed-head dynamic. Because it was a working microphone rather than a limited-run studio legend, survivors tend to show honest wear — plating rubbed at the head, paint loss on the body, the occasional stiff tilt joint. Buyers should confirm which impedance version they're getting, since the high-Z and low-Z versions serve different rigs.
There's no meaningful collector premium attached to the 630 the way there is to E-V's studio ribbon and large-diaphragm dynamics — it's a utility microphone, and it's priced like one. That's arguably its charm. It's a piece of American broadcast infrastructure you can still put on a stand, tilt the head, and use for exactly what it was built to do: make speech sound crisp and present without asking for a fortune or a fuss.
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